The Role of Social Studies in Early Childhood Education

For the successful development of the pre school child, an environment must be constructed so that young children can investigate their own questions and their own realities. We develop this environment through the use of “social studies”.

It is through this “social studies” that we develop children’s skills in relationship thinking, problem solving, making generalizations out of details, posing questions, answering questions, working collaboratively and independently, developing a sense of caring and social responsibility, and integrating the use of skills from other academic areas. We begin developing these skills from our very youngest children in our classrooms by creating the environments that will help support these skills.

An important part of the basis of our social studies curriculum at Trinity is referred to as implicit social studies – the life of the classroom itself.  How we organize and manage the classroom – as well as the whole school – sends a powerful message to the students about values and community.  As the children bring to the school a wide array of experiences and personal knowledge the information becomes a part of this spontaneous, “implicit” curriculum. All ideas generated from our organization and thoughts of children make for opportunities to further our teaching and learning.